A TRIBUTE TO NEVILLE SKEETE

By Dr. Kenny Anthony

There are friends who occupy spaces in our lives that give value and meaning to our own existence. Their deaths bring an emptiness, a chasm, a void. How then do we fill the empty spaces that friendship once occupied? Neville is one such person whose death will leave empty spaces for many.

He was, after all, no ordinary man, no ordinary human being. This was a man who knew love, loyalty, friendship, compassion and commitment. Neville, like Cyrus, knew and believed that “all men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.” So, Neville judged none and loved all. His was a heart which celebrated love of friendship like few others could.

Most knew him as an avid sportsman, one who excelled at multiple disciplines. They also knew him as “the”handsome, talented architect. But he was more than that, so much more! Neville was a genius, an artist, a master of his craft, a perfectionist. What poets crafted with the rhythm and cadence of words, Neville crafted with his architectural pen. He gave his designs an immanence, an enduring quality, defying time and space.

Neville could transform a building or an open space like none other. He knew and understood beauty, when to give it and when to take it away.

Significantly, he did not keep his genius to himself. To the contrary, he was a masterful teacher of his craft. He shared his ideas freely, watched as his designs were stolen, and did not care to know that there was something called intellectual property and copyright which he could have used to protect his masterpieces.

It was a curious oddity that even his political enemies made use of his enormous talent and skills. This is, I guess, no better testimony to his architectural brilliance.

Neville did not care
much for being revered.
Instead, what mattered
most to him were the buildings his firm inspired, designed
and built for the benefit of the people of Saint Lucia. The
Daren Sammy Cricket Ground stands as a monument of his immense talent.

Neville loved Saint Lucia, passionately and deeply. He delved into the photographs of its past, searching for its architectural soul and spirit.

He respected, admired and celebrated the artists in our midst and often, quietly, without fanfare or publicity, moved to support them in their time of need. But he was not just a craftsman, preoccupied with the design and construction of buildings of his time and age. He was also an architect who shaped and transformed lives. 

He hated poverty and what it did to the human condition. Neville was generous to a fault. This generosity of skill and craft, of teaching and learning, of giving and sharing, epitomized the life and times of Neville Skeete. It mattered not who you were or your lot in life, Neville would find a way to assist you in your hour of need. I have often been puzzled by persons who dedicate their lives to relieve the distressed, the unfortunate, the broken and the forlorn. What drives them? 

What makes philanthropy their pre-occupation? Among his friends, Neville’s generosity to all and sundry was legendary, unequalled and sometimes bewildering.

He fed the poor; he rescued the hungry from want; he wiped tears away; he paid for the education of the disadvantaged; he compensated his workers with wages far higher than prevailing rates; he paid medical bills and expenses for those who could not do so for themselves; he helped to buy vehicles; he repaired and built homes, often at his own expense, materials and all; he rescued many from the suffocation of debt; and the list could go and on.

This was a man who touched and changed lives by his compassion, kindness, generosity and humanity. The strange thing was that even if his generosity was abused and not acknowledged, he never complained. In fact, he would simply keep on giving.

I asked him on more than one occasion why did he so willingly accept to bear the burdens and crosses of others? He would simply smile and say, “I do not like to see others suffer.” In the words of Bulwer, Neville believed that “when a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.”

He loved me and I loved him fiercely in return.

The love we shared may initially have had to do with his undying passion and commitment for the Saint Lucia Labour Party, but I have no doubt that in later life, that it was the full measure of our personalities that endeared us to each other.

There was a time when it was not fashionable to support and promote the Labour Party. Not Neville Skeete. He knew and embraced the Labour Party in his youth, from the days when the likes of Sir George F.L. Charles, Herman Collymore, Karl La Corbiniere, and Oleo Jn Baptiste dominated the politics of the Market Steps, close to the family home in the CDC. He would often regale me and others about those early days.

He was never unwilling to put his enormous prestige at the altar of the Saint Lucia Labour Party. He stood by and with the Labour Party, in good times and in bad times, even when, in the days of a triumphant United Workers Party, his professional friends and acquaintances shunned and relegated the Labour Party to the dustbins of history. They were, of course, fatally wrong. The Saint Lucia Labour Party owes his memory a unique place in its still unfolding history.

There is so much of Neville that I shall miss. I will miss the weekly visits to his home, our journeys into the past, his passion for sport, the shared glasses of delightful wine even to the very end, the outrageous and mischievous conversations that we shared and yes, trite as it may be, the majestic perfection of his handwriting.

And this is what we miss when death claims a beloved friend; the empty spaces that are left behind that no one else can fill. Ever since his passing, I have asked myself, what do I do now when only an empty space is left where he always sat for our conversations?

The truth is that when loved ones leave us, those empty spaces can never be filled. To paraphrase Robert Hall, I have lost a friend “in whose understanding and virtue” I was able to “confide” and whose opinion I was able to value “for its justness and its sincerity.” He was beyond measure, “a judicious and sympathizing friend.”

I know my friend will be welcomed and embraced in love and peace in the constellation that awaits him.